Textured gradient tape mani

On Friday I had one of my sister's in law over for some polish play.  She had asked that I run through a few nail art techniques with her so she could get to real time advice about what to do.  We started with a regular two colour gradient.  She was a bit worried about it as she was going along, but I promised her it would turn out great once she had added top coat.  Of course it did work out perfect!  I then showed her how to do some stamping.  After a bit of trial and error in learning how to pick up the image fast enough, and then stamp it on, she was hooked.  She did an awesome job and I've promised to get her some stamping supplies for her upcoming birthday.

Because of her excellent work on her nails, she didn't want to remove it to try other techniques, so I grabbed a few swatch sticks.  We did some two toned tape mani design on one, some dotting on another and then on the third stick we created the same design as I put onto my nails below.

I started with a black base and then marked out the crosses with tape.  I then sponged on two textured polishes, Zoya Solange and OPI Jinx.  We then pulled off the striping tape and marveled at the beautiful sparkly colours contrasting against the black. Although clean up was a PITA because of all the gold sparks in Solange and Jinx.  I wish I had some some to photograph this one in, because it was truly beautiful.